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Fetzer heads up SuperPAC targeting NC Supreme Court

The election has led to the creation of an outside committee led by political and financial heavyweights backing Associate Justice Paul Newby. The group could raise enough money to exceed the roughly $625,000 the campaigns of Newby and challenger Sam Ervin IV had between them June 30.

It looks like this may be another case of not knowing where the money's coming from until it's too late. I've found no filings of this SuperPAC in either state or federal databases, but I could have missed it. This should give you an idea why the NC GOP and big business want to keep him warming that seat:

“I have a certain judicial philosophy which believes that the legislature needs to legislate and the courts are simply to apply the law as intended by the legislature,” Newby said, a stance he calls “judicial self-restraint.”

I'm pretty sure the NC Constitution should have been in there somewhere, as opposed to merely kow-towing for the Legislature. Of course, if we still had a Democratic majority in the General Assembly, Newby's "philosophy" would have read quite a bit differently, with the Constitution mentioned 2 or 3 times.

As far as that "judicial self-restraint" thing, I would be more likely to describe it as "judicial inactivity". I just spent a few hours trying to read some of Justice Newby's Opinions, and the most common thread I could see was:

Justice NEWBY did not participate in the consideration or decision of this case.

Comments

I could easily make the argument that there is no more important single contest in North Carolina this election than this one. It could change the balance on the court, which has penultimate authority over everything the idiots at the General Assembly have done.

The Legislature has, in my admittedly unlearned opinion, taken several steps that brush up against Constitutional limitations.

Having a conservative Court when there were Democratic majorities in the General Assembly seemed like an acceptable balance. But with a Republican GA, and very possibly a Republican Governor, that picture changes quite a bit. And when you add in a Justice being beholden to a SuperPAC, the picture gets so out of focus you can't even tell what you're looking at.

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